Shoot the Moon Studios

The Shoot the Moon site was hacked last week, but after a restore by my web hosting service (I love those guys – they were fantastic), everything seems to be in order again.  It’s made me even more leery about allowing comments and users I don’t recognize, which is a bummer, but I guess that’s the way of the world.

I had the pleasure of being an editorial assistant on TED – Whalberg’s feature that recently filmed in the Boston area.  It was a tremendous opportunity to work with some fantastic people, and to become extremely familiar with one of the new Panavision workflows.  Basically, all the work that is typically done off-site (like dailies, QC, LUTs, syncing, etc) is all done in-house, while the film is still being shot.  It’s a completely digital workflow – no film to DI – and though it has its flaws (it’s still being guinea-pigged) it’s has incredible potential.  I’m hoping to get to work on other projects that use that process, or something similar, in the near future.

While that was going on, I was also still working as an assistant editor for one indie doc, and doing some production work for a second doc.  That made those six weeks look like:  sleep, get up, work, work some more, work until 4 AM, drive home, sleep…  Now I’m just working on the two docs and trying to soak up some summer sunshine.  I hope to get onto another feature soon – and in the meantime, I’m taking August “off” a bit to just do some writing and regroup.  I have an idea for a short production piece, so I’ll be playing with that as well.

So, all winter long I lamented at the lack of paid work.  Now that spring has arrived (and is on its way to summer, suddenly), I’m suddenly inundated with work.  This is good – don’t get me wrong – but now I’m trying to balance all the various opportunities that have headed my way.

I was hired as Assistant Editor for a doc about To Kill A Mockingbird, called “Our Mockingbird”.  Bernice S. is the editor, and she’s just marvelous to work with.  She’s not only a gifted editor, with so much experience, but she’s a lovely person to spend hours and hours in the editing room with.  The project itself is a bit messy, as it’s gone through three different editors before landing with Bernice, and there’s been little media management, and no rights management of any kind.  That’s good news for me though, as it means lots of work!  The timetable is a little daunting – the director would like to be finished by July, but Bernice and I just keep chugging away as best we’re able.  I’ve got quite a task with the rights management (and an interesting dilemmna regarding Fair Use), but that’s a big enough topic for its own post!

I’m also doing some production coordinating/asst. editing for Rebel, which is a piece my previous boss has been working on for some time.  Looks like we’re getting down to being finished, and the film is really shining now.  Thank god I completed most of the rights management work last year – now it’s just ordering and tracking paperwork, rather than hunting down images.

Last, but not least, I’ve got an opportunity to work for a Hollywood feature film that’s in production right now in Boston.  It would be as 2nd (or maybe 3rd) Asst. Editor, and the hours are kind of sucky, but a really incredible opportunity nonetheless.  I’ll write more on that as it develops.

So, finally, back to work!

A few weeks ago, I started working through a sequence on the re-edit I’m doing, for a piece I created a couple years ago.  It was a short narrative, action/religious thriller about a lesbian demon hunter.  I know – what’s not to like, right?  I originally created the piece for my final project in film school, and (as intended) learned a lot along the way.  Once I got into editing, I realized that I really didn’t know how to shoot an action sequence.  I didn’t have nearly enough close shots and cut-aways, and I needed way more takes than I actually shot.  The editing for that sequence was a bit of a nightmare.  About a year later, I watched the piece again, and could easily identify the shots I needed to make it better.  Being the intrepid filmmaker that I am, I got a small crew together, along with the lead actors, and reshot a bunch of footage to use as inserts.  I had every intention of immediately re-editing the sequence, but, well, life gets in the way sometimes.

At any rate, I have been working through the re-edit of late, and I’m struck by how complicated a re-edit is.  You can’t just drop in the new footage – you have to take the entire sequence apart, which generally means messing about with the sequences on either side of it, until you’ve ripped apart half the movie to put it back together again.  Then there’s laying in the music so that it matches up, re-color-correcting everything to make it look good, and all the tweaking you though you were already done with.  It’s a lot of work.  But, it’s also a lot of fun, and incredibly rewarding to see something you thought would never work start to come together.  Once it’s done, I hope to put up a copy on this site, so stay tuned!

Landed a job working in the production office for an ESPN commercial shoot this week – very interesting.  Sitting in casting session now, and watching these actors take a script and really make it their own.  It’s impressive – and these guys are quintessential Boston sports fans – or at least, that’s who they’re portraying.  It’s reminding me of conversations at family holidays – the debates about the two best Celtics players, which ball player deserves a sandwich named after him… hilarious.

I think we can all agree that the job market still stinks, right?  Particularly the TV and Film industry – we’re not exactly spoiled for choices, especially in the New England area.  I haven’t had a lull in jobs like this in several years, and I’m starting to go a bit stir-crazy.  So, in additional to pounding the pavement looking for work, I need to find some fun projects to fill up my time and keep my skills sharp.  Something inspirational, fun – something to fill the hours until the magical day arrives when I will have other work!  Who’s with me?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Well, looks like I’ve got some footage to play around with on ye olde editing machine, so I’ll start there.  I’m also going to keep my eyes out for (sigh) unpaid work in the area, as I’d rather be busy and keeping myself in the game than start to stagnate, even if there’s no money coming in.  As I said, not exactly spoiled for choices.  Come on, Boston industry – I’m ready for you to bounce back!

Here’s a tip:  if you’re going to start your own little business, don’t wait to do accounting.  Accounting can be really boring, and somewhat mind-bending, but it’s absolutely necessary (particularly when it comes to tax time).  When I started STM, I got a spiffy new version of Quickbooks, and the Missing Manual (which I highly recommend) and taught myself how to use the software.  I diligently saved all my receipts, labeled and coded them, and even had a chart of accounts.  But what I failed to do was put them all together.  They remained separate entities until… oh, right – taxes.  Guess I should do a year’s worth of accounting so I can do my taxes.  Genius.

So, instead of just inputting all my receipts and such as I went along, I had to do a year’s worth all at once.  Not my best move ever.  It took about three weeks to get everything in.  Oh, and I learned that there isn’t a Chart of Accounts you can just import for the film industry for the Mac-based Quickbooks program.  There are a few for the PC-based version of the software online, but not the Mac.  So, I created one.  If anyone wants it, let me know – I’ll email it to you and you can save yourself many hours of work.

Now everything is in, updated, and reported to the government.  The bad news:  due to the industry stinking up the room last year, and the fact that I’ve been primarily working for a non-profit, I took a loss.  The good news:  the loss was a very nice tax break.  See – sunny side up.  And now, I’ve got to go enter some receipts into my accounts…

Demo reels are incredibly important for landing jobs and sharing your work.  Right?  Of course.  Which makes them fairly stress-inducing things to put together.  It’s not so much how to compress your work into three minutes or less, but more which projects do you include, and which clips of those projects best highlights your latest efforts?  I’m struggling with this now – I have several projects I’m proud of, but how to pick the very best pieces?  And, is less always more?  Is a one-minute demo preferable to a three-minute?

I’m also struggling with background music – to use, or not to use?  It honestly makes it easier to edit, if you’ve got some great rhythm behind your cuts, and it’s a useful way to limit the length (if a music piece is only two minutes, you can’t really go over that in your demo, unless you start looping the music track).  But, which piece of music is best?  And, do you use ducking or just have the music take the place of any dialogue already in the clips?  And what if the clip you’re using already has music?  Ah, demo reel, how you keep me up at night.

I was going to post my old demo reel to this site, but after watching it, I realized that it’s not just old, but seriously out-dated.  Hence, my current dilemma.  But, I will persevere, and put something together that represents recent projects – if only so that I can take out footage that is so dated, it’s a little hard for me to watch.

When Blind to Failure screened at CDIA a couple months ago, I noticed that the wind noise in the interviews at the summit of Washington were much more noticeable than when I was editing, and I realized that I was relying solely on the tiny speakers that are part of my Mac laptop.  I’m sure that any sound engineers reading this are shaking their head at me, and my only (lame) defense is that I was originally editing that piece for web distribution.  It didn’t occur to me that I may try to enter it into some festivals, and that if I was lucky enough to get into one, that they would likely play it with a full sound system.  Huh.

So, I’ve contacted a colleague of mine who attended CDIA with me.  His name is Alec, and he did some wonderful sound engineering for my graduation project (Birthright).  Alec is working in the Boston area, doing sound design and engineering, and has been gracious enough to offer his help with cleaning up the wind noise on Blind to Failure.  Not all the wind noise, of course – I don’t want it to sound like I filmed them against a pretty mountain-top backdrop, I want it to sound and feel like we’re at the summit of Mt. Washington.  But I also want to make sure the audience can hear, and understand, the interviews.  I’m sure Alec will help me strike a happy balance.

So, lesson learned:  if you’re planning to anything with a piece you’ve done, anything at all, it’s a good idea to at least let someone with a really good stereo system screen it for you, so you can hear what it actually sounds like.  Even external speakers aren’t usually good enough to let you hear sounds like low-frequency hums, wind noise, even some clicks and pops – though I’ve been told that the superduper (expensive) headphones can be a decent substitute.  But really – unless you’re also a sound engineer, you should make a connection with one you can trust to at least listen to your stuff and let you know if you have any issues they could fix.  And then, do yourself a favor and save up a little cash to pay them to make those fixes.  It’s worth it!

I’ve been busy with another project (theater) until this week, but now I’m back full time for Shoot the Moon, and ready for my next adventure:  festivals!

For a short documentary such as Blind to Failure, I think that submitting it to a few festivals is a natural step.  There doesn’t seem to be much of a market for short docs, except as demo pieces and (of course) for clients who use them to promote their project or educate their audience.  I’ve done some research into which festivals may be a good fit for Blind to Failure -starting with the incredibly helpful book “Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide” by Chris Gore.  It’s a pretty fun read, and he does a good job of breaking up festivals by niche, location, prestige, etc.  I’ve followed that up with some internet searches and reviews of festivals, and here’s what I’ve come up with for the first round of submissions:

SXSW (South by South West), whose early submission deadline is…tomorrow.

LA Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival

I’ve already missed the Sundance deadline for this year (Sundance being the obligatory long-shot submission, though for all I know they’re all long-shots).  After these first three, there are a number of Boston-based fests I plan to submit to, for 2011 festivals.  We’ll see if anyone is interested in including Blind to Failure in their lineups.  Fingers crossed!